


oh, to be good this time

by nextgreatadventure



Category: UnREAL (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 19:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16125386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextgreatadventure/pseuds/nextgreatadventure
Summary: Their relationship has been weird since the beginning.





	oh, to be good this time

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t know what this is, some sort of frankenstein patchwork quilt of words, but i just really wanted to contribute to this stupid pairing. 
> 
> spoilers for all 4 seasons scattered throughout, and there's some background chet/quinn in there, which i am mostly sorry for.

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

“And you must be Quinn King,” Rachel says above the din, sauntering up in nothing but a hotel bathrobe. Which—okay, isn’t that unusual, given the company they are keeping this weekend.

Rachel has had so very much to drink, that’s clear, and Quinn would guess she’s gone and done at least one more line in the bathroom with a financier, but even without the coke and liquor Quinn knows that Rachel’s eyes sparkle like the goddamn ocean.

It’s maybe...3AM, and the party has been raging for hours. They have the entire floor to themselves. The hazy lights from the Strip dazzle from beyond the forty-fourth story windows. They are certainly not the only ones still awake in this godforsaken city.

Quinn raises a dark brow. A nice overbearing buzz has settled behind her eyelids and she feels on top of the world again, sitting on this immaculate white couch, freshly waxed and tanned legs crossed in her expensive Gucci dress in this expensive suite in this expensive Vegas hotel surrounded by the best drugs and alcohol this side of the Mississippi. They’re a week away from production on what Quinn is sure will be their best season in years. 

“I might be,” Quinn replies. When she smiles, the corners of Rachel’s mouth tug up, too.

“No seriously like, _the_ Quinn King, executive producer extraordinaire, mega boss ass bitch, queen of her own empire, that Quinn King?”

“Shut up Goldberg,” Quinn mutters, looking away and sipping at her drink, but she’s still grinning. 

Rachel, to Quinn’s mild surprise, eases a knee into the couch cushion right beside her own thigh. She makes like she’s going to straddle her, lays a hand on Quinn’s shoulder for balance when she sways drunkenly. A few people are looking over and laughing.

“Whoa girl,” Quinn says. “Think you might be having a little too much fun tonight, Rachel? Maybe it’s time to get off the wagon?”

Rachel ignores this. “I hear you got matching tattoos with your business partner. That’s wild.”

Rachel gets touchy like this sometimes (she’s like a child that way—not that Quinn has much experience with children) but as her slight weight settles in Quinn’s lap, Quinn is sure that this is only happening because they’re drunk and high off more than stimulants, partying and schmoozing with the sort of people that are going to write blank checks out to their brand new production company. The sort of people that are going to make Darius, Rachel’s hand-picked, hard-won Darius, a star. Rachel is not usually like this by the light of day—unless maybe she’s producing.

Which, Quinn reasons, is not outside the realm of possibility in this moment. Rachel may be angling for any number of outcomes here, but Rachel knows better than to try to out-produce the executive producer, who taught her many of those same tricks in the first place all those years ago.

Quinn decides she’ll play along. She isn’t too much of a hard-ass to admit that she loves a flirty, relaxed Rachel, and Rachel knows it. 

(Their relationship has been weird since the beginning.)

“You know what, I did,” Quinn says, like the thought has only just occurred to her. She holds up the hand holding her rocks glass, wrist out to display the scribbled ink. Rachel looks down at her own tattoo. Smiles.

Without really realizing it, Quinn has placed her free hand against the side of Rachel’s thigh. Her fingers are brushing the cotton robe, but her palm is resting against warm skin. Where else is she supposed to put her hand? On the arm of the couch? Quinn never backs down from a power move.

Rachel is showing no signs of leaving Quinn’s lap. In fact, she’s leaning forward. Nobody is really looking at them anymore because Romeo has started playing a music video that looks more like a porno on the screen next to the bay windows and it has diverted a lot of attention into the next room.

Rachel presses her forehead to Quinn’s temple. Her breath heats Quinn’s cheek, smelling sweet and drunk, like tequila and orange slices. “You’re like a total MILF,” she sighs mindlessly, apropos of nothing. “All these like young hot friends of Darius’s keep staring at you.”

Quinn’s body shifts uncomfortably at this, becomes suddenly taught—one long, hard geometric line. She realizes this and tries to relax. Her fingers, uncooperative, dig deeper into the bathrobe and rocks glass respectively. “Yeah, well. Thanks but no thanks.”

“I slept with Romeo.” Rachel says, and Quinn thinks this must be Rachel’s idea of a segue. 

(Rachel has started to play her thumbs softly along Quinn’s bare biceps and this...this—

This isn’t what they do. This is weird, even for them. Even for Rachel.)

“What, just now?”

Rachel nods.

Quinn snorts. “Was he any good?”

“Maybe,” Rachel says, and she sounds like she’s retreated into that faraway place she often goes to inside her mind, but she’s still playing the backs of her fingers along Quinn’s arms like she wants Quinn to follow her there.

Finally, Quinn leans back to survey. She traces the tired lines of Rachel’s familiar face, the way her eyes have gone slack, the soft curve of her mouth. Quinn is still feeling fuzzy around the edges, a bit bold, maybe a little loose, thanks to the veritable champagne fountain. Maybe a little reckless, too, now that Rachel (her Rachel) is in her fucking lap. 

“How about you, Goldie?” Quinn asks through squinted eyes, a soft rumble. “You any good?” 

Rachel’s face is an ambiguous, unreadable slate for many moments, right up until the moment a wave of mirth breaks over it like a sunrise. “Take me out for a spin and see for yourself,” she says.

Quinn swallows. Tries to laugh, but halfway through she realizes she’s just clearing her throat. She had half expected to be calling a bluff, or to zing back with some jokey banter, but this doesn’t feel like a joke. It feels like an invitation. Rachel’s brazenness has momentarily trumped her own in this sudden game of brinkmanship, and Quinn can’t bring herself to swallow it down (she never backs down from a power move).

Rachel taps an index finger against one of Quinn’s exposed collarbones, traces between two freckles absently. “Oh, sorry, boss,” she mutters. “Was that...inappropriate?”

But Rachel is still smiling, just a little, and it is disarmingly, frustratingly appealing. At this point Quinn isn’t sure if she’s returning Rachel’s smile or if she’s just baring her teeth. 

“Sweetheart,” Quinn deadpans, “everything we do is _wildly_ inappropriate.”

Rachel throws little a glance over her shoulder. Quinn’s eyes flick there, too. Nobody is watching them.

“I’d let you,” Rachel says now, so softly Quinn has to lean closer again to hear. Rachel’s mouth is practically on the shell of her ear. “If you wanted to. You know that, right?”

And now Quinn knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’s had entirely too much to drink, and so has Rachel, because they’re hurtling blindly around a corner of their relationship that they just never fucking touch with a ten foot pole. A five foot pole sometimes maybe, but never with their bare hands. Never with both eyes open, even when the world is dizzy with alcohol.

Quinn’s chest suddenly feels laid with a ton of hot bricks, but she can’t help it: she’s overwhelmed with curiosity about how far this will go (honestly, has always been curious about how far this might eventually go), and so her slightly trembling fingers start to slide up Rachel’s skin beneath the soft cotton.

Having Rachel’s mouth against her ear is, whether by accident or design, a small miracle, or maybe just a bad joke, because the soft noise that comes out of it moments later affects Quinn viscerally—something hot and urgent and unexpected uncoils low in her belly, and expands.

The tip of Quinn’s middle finger has barely touched the crease of Rachel’s hipbone when Rachel peels back to look into her face again. Quinn sees something hot and urgent uncoiling there, too.

“Quinn,” Rachel whispers, “take me somewh—“

But in a pitch perfect display of bad timing, Romeo and one of the network guys come plowing in against the sofa, knocking Rachel aside and spilling Quinn’s bourbon absolutely everywhere — which they absolutely do not even notice.

“Jesus,” Quinn shouts, always the loudest voice in the room. 

“Oh my god,” Network Guy says, looking back and forth between the two women. Quinn is shaking bourbon from her arm and thinking he might be about to apologize but then he says, “You two are so fucking hot.”

Quinn’s heart is still hammering and she can’t even muster the energy to roll her eyes. Rachel is being tugged away into the next room by Romeo, who is kissing her neck, and Quinn turns pointedly away from the wide, pleading brown eyes staring straight at her. The sneer is already tugging at Quinn’s entire upper lip, which she then hides behind the rim of her practically empty drink.

Network Guy offers her a literal platter of blow in belated penance. Quinn actually does roll her eyes this time.

“Jesus, what is it, 1983?” And then after a beat, “Alright, yeah. Give it here.”

 

An hour or so later, Quinn and Rachel chance a glance across the room at one another. They hold each other’s eyes for such an impossibly long time. Rachel mouths “I’m sorry”, and Quinn looks away first.

The high hasn’t worn off yet, but Quinn announces that she’s going to bed: don’t burn the city down, they’ve still got a show to make.

They do not talk about it in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“To absent, candy-ass fathers,” Quinn toasts. The night breeze curls her dark hair against her cheek.

Rachel raises her beer bottle. “And psycho bitch moms.”

“To alcoholic parents everywhere, both literally and figuratively.”

They both take a long, long pull. Afterwards, it is Rachel who breaks the comfortable silence.

“Do you think if there wasn’t like a decade and a half between us, we would have been friends growing up? I didn’t really have any.”

“Uhh, one single decade at most,” Quinn corrects, lighting another cigarette. “But yeah probably.” She blows out a string of smoke and hands it off to Rachel. “I was weirder then than I am now.”

“Aw, dude, little Quinn,” Rachel grins. “I’ve never really thought about her before. What was she like? Marching around the schoolyard in little stilettos, barking orders at future prom kings?”

“Something like that.” Quinn is smiling a little sadly. “I didn’t have any friends either.”

Rachel matches her mouth to Quinn’s lipstick marks and sucks in. “I would have been your friend,” she says on the exhale.

“You would have hated me, Rachel,” Quinn tells her.

“I mean, I hate you a little now, but we’re still friends, right?”

Rachel knocks their shoulders together. Hands Quinn the cigarette. Quinn pretends the wetness stinging her eyes is from the wafting smoke. 

Rachel does not. “Sorry your dad died.” She’s looking at Quinn in a curious way. Quinn’s seen it before. Something like fondness mixed with sadness mixed with the inevitability of someone about to jump from a bridge. “I’ll come with you to spread the ashes,” Rachel continues, “if you want. So you don’t have to do it alone.”

Quinn makes a strange, garbled, almost comical sound in the back of her throat. The fact that Rachel just _knows_ that she’d be going alone to spread her dead father’s ashes if Rachel didn’t come with is just…

It’s a lot.

“Where have you been all my shitty, miserable life?” Quinn says it like she actually wants an answer, like she’s actually angry. Maybe she is.

Rachel lays her head on Quinn’s shoulder in response. 

Many minutes of smoking in silence later, Rachel speaks again.

“Maybe we would have saved each other, back then.” _Instead of ruining each other now_ , she does not say.

“Yeah,” Quinn barks a low laugh. Flicks the cigarette into the pool. Her voice sounds stuffy. “Maybe.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachel can hear Quinn cackling even before she slides into her office. As the door clicks softly shut, the sound of a bottleneck clinking against glass cuts the laughter, still ringing.

Quinn turns to look at her. She takes two full strides across the office with a full glass in her outstretched hand. “Drink fast and then drop those panties, Goldberg,” Quinn says. “I’m about to give you the best damn orgasm you’ve ever had. You sure as shit earned it.”

A beat passes, and Quinn’s face lights up in a grin. She starts to laugh again. Rachel hides her own smile behind her glass. Her heart is in her throat and she tries to swallow it down with the lukewarm vodka.

Why is it that she never feels as elated, as worthy, as she does when she’s just done something unconscionable because her boss asked her to (because _Quinn_ asked her to) and done it unbelievably _well_? Why does the pride always outweigh the disgust?

(She doesn’t have the time nor the energy to contend with the answers to these questions, let alone the capacity.)

“Fucking legendary, Rachel, truly,” Quinn is saying. “People are going to be talking about this fifty years from now. Erecting statues in your honor. Whatever the fuck people do,” she continues, kicking off her heels. “You are, as ever, a revelation. I simply don’t deserve you.”

Quinn straightens up. She looks directly into Rachel’s eyes, and tips the glass she’s holding in Rachel’s direction. Rachel feels her face grow hot, feels her hands begin to shake around her own glass. She wishes Quinn would keep talking. She wants to hear more about how well she did, how worthwhile she is, she needs Quinn to keep telling her that she’s okay—that she is _fine_ , better than fine, because there’s at least one (terrible) thing she’s great at and one (terrible) person in the world who thinks she’s something special, who doesn’t think she’s absolute garbage, of course not, of _course_ not, because at least here in this room on this set in this life, she’s a diamond. She wants Quinn to make her believe she’s not a bad person, even though sometimes she’s so sure that without Quinn, she’d have a real shot at being a good person. She wants Quinn’s soft strong hands on her face again, or around her neck, or maybe she wants her own hands around Quinn’s neck instead, she doesn’t know, doesn’t care.

Quinn’s fingers snap in her face. “Goldie,” she says. “You still with me?”

Rachel throws back the rest of the glass of vodka in one go. “Yeah,” she pants. Her chest burns. She looks into Quinn’s eyes and holds the gaze like clinging to a ledge. “Of course. Always.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachel has always confused sex with intimacy. Deep down, she’s known that long before Dr. Simon told her. She knows she’s disturbed in the way she processes things (or doesn’t process them), knows that she fucks feelings out or away or back inside and she’s okay with that, she has to be. 

(There are...reasons for this, her mother and medicine cabinet would have her believe, but it’s probably for those very same reasons that she couldn’t ever begin to decode them. Therapy and essential honesty can only get you so far.)

Sometimes she’ll be smack in the middle of a spiral, or riding the beginning notes of one, or in the last vestiges—it doesn’t matter whether she’s sober or drunk or dissociating or just fine—the way she knows to cope is with sex. Which is easy to find, but is not intimacy. Deep down, Rachel knows this. But it’s as close as she can get.

Often, the people Rachel has sex with just don’t know how to handle her (even Jeremy, Adam, Coleman—the people who were supposed to). The only person who has ever been able to handle her, really handle her, is Quinn. Quinn has a steady hand. Quinn gets her like no one else ever has. And their relationship is pretty fucked—Rachel knows this, too. Of course she does, between she and Quinn, she might be only one who knows it. It’s not the healthiest, but nothing in Rachel’s life has ever been healthy. At least Quinn knows her. At least Quinn is always _there_. At least Quinn doesn’t habitually try to institutionalize her.

So there are moments, during sex—Rachel’s innate coping mechanism—when Rachel could really use some handling: an anchor, a parachute, fucking anything to keep her brain from shooting off into outer space. To keep her skin from sparking and spitting and peeling back from her skeleton. There are times she wishes, so desperately, for a little intimacy. God knows that in those moments, the person she’s having sex with rarely understands how to offer up what she needs.

So sometimes, in those moments, bizarrely—and Rachel is fully aware of this—it is imagining Quinn that gives her that. It’s imagining Quinn’s eyes, unblinking, seeing right through her, just like they always have.

Sometimes, on frequently increasing occasions, the Quinn in her mind places two fingertips beneath her chin and holds them there. Sometimes she slips those fingertips into Rachel’s mouth (Rachel has always had an overactive imagination). Sometimes the person she’s actually screwing does these things, too, picking up on some desperate frequency she’s emitting—but Rachel doesn’t know how to explain why it doesn’t feel the same as her fantasy. It doesn’t feel like intimacy, even though neither are real. She doesn’t think too hard about it. She doesn’t try to dissect it. She just gets off and then tries to sleep, wakes up from wherever she is and goes into work (lately, going into work is simply opening the door and walking the fifteen yards to the edit bay, or eighteen to Quinn’s office.

Maybe it’s not so bizarre, after all.)

Sometimes, she wonders why she’s never tried harder to actually sleep with Quinn (there have been moments, but nothing that has ever amounted to anything). Why she’s never simply asked. It’s not a flirtation thing, or an experiment thing—Quinn has, vehemently, never been either to Rachel. She probably couldn’t pass it off as a favor for a friend, either, especially when they’re fighting more than friending these days. Quinn doesn’t strike Rachel as the type who’d allow herself to participate in some messed up threesome, which is another thought that has occured to Rachel (“Hey Quinn, will you just lie there and look at me while I ride this rando contractor?”), but the thing is...she’s pretty sure Quinn would do it, if it were just the two of them. If Rachel asked. If she coaxed. She’s almost certain. She’s also almost certain that because it’s not an experiment or a favor or a threesome, that means it’s something harder to pin down. Something more like a need. But this scares Rachel in a way she’s uncomfortable examining and so Rachel just...never asks. But still. She just...she wishes—

“Can I tell you something?”

Quinn’s bare feet are in Rachel’s lap. They are so utterly, unbelievably wasted. It's a wonder they can hold up a conversation, however misguided. They’re at a pool party at some asshole’s mansion in the hills — a rare weekend in LA for production meetings and perfunctory business meals.

And drinking. God. So much drinking.

Why is it that all their most reckless interactions happen in a crowd?

“Mhm,” Quinn says languidly.

Rachel has a finicky filter on her best days. She has negative zero boundaries on her worst. “Sometimes I think about you when I fuck other people.”

It’s a testament to their relationship that Quinn doesn’t laugh, doesn’t seem to think it’s a joke. Doesn’t ask Rachel to repeat herself. She also doesn’t speak for a long, long time. Her face is unreadable. 

And then finally: “You...think about fucking me?”

“No,” Rachel says, and a tick in Quinn’s jaw flickers. “I just...think about you.”

Slowly, Quinn’s face breaks from what Rachel thinks might be passive panic into a sly, hesitant smile. “Rachel, that’s a little gay.”

Rachel shrugs. She feels like she might float up and away from the earth at any moment, like maybe none of this is real. “You help me focus at work. You help me focus when I’m a mess. Makes sense to me.”

“Hm” is Quinn’s evasive reply. The lack of reaction makes Rachel’s skin burn.

“You’re in my head all the time anyway,” Rachel’s voice has hardened and knows she must be slurring her words, but she doesn’t care, can’t help it.

“Hm,” Quinn grunts again. Her eyes are so dark. To her credit, Quinn hasn’t looked away, but she hasn’t done anything else either.

Rachel watches Quinn’s face as closely as her numb mind will let her. The seconds tick by. When it becomes clear that Quinn is not going to say anything more, Rachel does.

“So…I tell you about how you’ve invaded every single part of my goddamn life, and that’s...like, literally all you have to say?” Rachel isn’t sure if she meant this as accusatory as it actually comes out. She meant it to be funnier, biting. They are so drunk. She couldn’t control or manipulate or produce anything right now even if she wanted to.

Rachel lets Quinn think she’s angry (maybe she is), lets the tension pull taught between them. She finds that she desperately wants to see Quinn react. Wants to see if it hurts, or makes her uncomfortable, makes her leave. Wants to see if it makes a spark.

Quinn’s unfocused face does falter, just a little. A moment later the mask slips, like they’ve just passed an invisible marker, coming up on some point of no return. Her jaw clenches.

“Yeah, I actually have a lot to say about that, Rachel,” she says, finally. “But I’m not doing this while we’re both trashed out of our minds.”

 

In the usual pattern, they don’t talk about it come morning. There’s even more plausible deniability here than they’re used to: bizarre, half-remembered words exchanged drunkenly beside a stranger’s pool. They can almost pretend it was just another fight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They aren’t speaking. Rachel’s choice. Something about Quinn keeping secrets, or lying, or both, or being manipulative or a bitch or both. Something about Quinn being a selfish narcissistic narcissist and dragging Rachel down with her, destroying Rachel’s happiness, and being a general uncaring unfeeling heartless garbage person, which—double standard, but whatever. Also what is she, a cartoon villain? Rachel will get over it. She always does.

“Rachel. Hey.” Quinn catches Rachel’s hand as Rachel passes by. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

Rachel wrenches it away. “No you’re not.”

“Rachel,” Quinn says again.

“Listen, just leave me alone, okay? Let me get through this month and then I’m gone.”

“You need to stop pretending like everything that happens to you is somehow my fault,” Quinn says. 

(Something about Rachel never being able to take the fucking blame for once, surprise surprise.)

“Oh really?” Rachel laughs. She’s got that immovable, holier-than-thou look of incredulity on her face that Quinn hates because it cannot be budged. “Except yeah, I still think a hell of a lot of this is directly your fault.”

Something deep inside of Quinn snaps. She drags Rachel by the arm into a nearby deserted corner. She tugs her close, and hisses into her ear. “It’s not my fault you’re so goddamn good at the job I took a massive chance and hired you for, or that you get off on being a sad, terrible, hypocrite of a human being. Get off that shitty high horse, take it around back, and put a bullet between its eyes—because this tired old act? It’s time for it to die, Rachel. We’re the same, you and me. You don’t want to admit it, but it’s true. We’re a team, remember? We want the exact same things.”

Rachel looks silently into Quinn’s eyes for just long enough that Quinn starts to soften, like maybe Quinn broke through, just a little. Like old times. Quinn knows that her own face is doing something, because her emotions certainly are: she misses Rachel, she can’t sacrifice her pride, she misses Rachel, she knows she’s not wrong, she’s angry and out of patience, she misses Rachel, she worries that in some small way, Rachel is right about her, about everything. She’s hurting. _She misses Rachel._

“Wow. Go to hell, Quinn,” Rachel says, and calmly walks away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cabin is great, for about a day and a half. It’s so quiet in the Oregon wilderness, the nearest town is four miles down the dirt road and another nine on the state highway. Rachel hasn’t seen another human being in four days. She paces the two-room house like a sleepwalker, drinks too much, smokes too much. She can’t really remember any of the grand plans she had for herself anymore, it’s too silent, and her head is too loud.

Late one night, she calls Quinn. Quinn picks up on the second ring.

“Rachel,” Quinn says, a hint of suppressed worry in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Rachel tells her. “I mean—I’m okay.” She laughs nervously and without humor. “I think.”

On the other end of the line, Quinn ducks away from the open breeze bar, away from the noise and the music. Starts heading in the opposite direction, toward the dark beach. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees that Chet is watching her go. “Okay,” Quinn says slowly. “So what’s up?”

Rachel sighs. She glances out the black kitchen window — no stars, too many trees. Possibly too many moments pass before she says, “I’m just like, so fucking lonely, Quinn.” She runs a hand through her long hair, lets the tears well up and drop for the very first time.

Quinn scans the ocean line. A spill of stars are sparkling there. The tropical air is wet, and sticky, and she wonders exactly how many miles from home they both are. How many miles away from each other. “The Thoreau life isn’t what you thought it was gonna be, huh.”

Rachel shakes her head, forgetting they aren’t face to face. Says nothing. 

Quinn hears Rachel sniffing, and she lets a long breath out through her nose. “What do you need, Rachel?” Her voice is not unkind, she thinks. Not necessarily. But Rachel left. Rachel was so sure about what she needed, and it wasn’t Quinn, so Quinn did what any good boss (or friend, or mother, or lover, whoever) would do: gave her a check for fifty thousand dollars and let her go. Quinn is just trying to move along with her goddamn life — Chet is waiting for her.

And yet here they are, she and Rachel (always fucking Quinn and Rachel) and they remain on the phone, silent for long, long minutes, listening to each other breathe. 

“Listen, I’m sorry I accused you of trying to buy me off. Of not wanting me to get better.”

“You know it’s not true, right?” Quinn says quietly. “I do want you to be happy. I do.” There’s a _but_ there, something she leaves unspoken and Rachel does not comment on.

“Yeah.” Rachel takes the finger from her mouth and picks at a hole in her tattered t-shirt instead. “Stay with me until I fall asleep?” It’s only half a question, half whispered.

Quinn swallows. She glances back toward the lights, the noise of the bar, Chet. She folds down into the sand, even though there’s a perfectly empty wicker chair a few feet away. 

(Quinn knows she could do better than Chet — or could have done, if she hadn’t put her career first. She does love him, most days. She thinks maybe he’s what she deserves. She’s worked harder than anyone she knows but she still slept her way into this business and she’s changing, but she’ll never be a good person. She couldn’t bring herself to make it work with Bill or John or fill in the blank who isn’t Chet and so he _must_ be all that she deserves, right? Which is fine, even though her chest feels empty more often than it feels full. She looks at the enormous glittering ring on her finger, and wills it to be enough.)

“Quinn. Did you...have you meant everything you’ve ever said about me?”

“Go to sleep, Rachel.”

Rachel ignores this. “You’re the only person who really knows me. Like really, really knows me.”

Quinn is silent.

“Sometimes I replay all the things people have said about me in my head, and when I start to sort through them…” She falters. “I––I realize...the only ones I really _believe_ are from you. Not my mom, or my shrinks, dumb contestants, producers, boyfriends. Not even myself, because I have no idea. You’ve said the best and the worst things about me. How can they all be true?”

Quinn sighs impatiently. “A million things can be true simultaneously, dumbass. Read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s twitter.”

It’s Rachel’s turn to be silent.

Quinn pinches the bridge of her nose. “The only things I know,” she begins, the words churning out like cement, “the only things that are _undeniable_ , are those things I told you last time you were in front of me. Remember?”

Rachel remembers. She has played those uncharacteristically kind words inside her head nearly every day since, just trying to navigate the trainwreck of her life.

“You can always come back. _Rachel_ ,” Quinn adds when Rachel is silent, prodding, until Rachel sniffs again in response. “You can always, always come back.”

(The “to me” doesn’t need to be said. They both hear it loud and clear.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quinn isn’t sure that Rachel will snap out of it, this time. No amount of tough love can fix this one, and Quinn doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s changed too much to fit against Rachel like this. They aren’t broken puzzle pieces sliding together now, some bastardized semblance of a whole. They’re just….shards. Rachel is utterly shattered and Quinn is too busy picking up her own pieces that she left scattered along the way, trying to pretend her palms aren’t beginning to bleed.

“I was _fine_ ,” Quinn lies. It’s so dark inside her office that she can’t even see Rachel’s eyes. “I was just dandy, living my life at an arm’s length, keeping a sanity bubble around me and just doing my goddamn job, stone cold emotionless like always, which I was much better at before you came into the picture, by the way—”

Quinn’s using her old self like a security blanket. She doesn’t recognize Rachel anymore, barely recognizes herself. It scares her, makes her feel like she’s lost, like she needs to move on, but she’s not ready to. She doesn’t even know where to go from here. She just knows that she can’t stay. 

(Quinn is sure that the map of her life will be marked out in four distinct places: Before the baby, after the baby. Before Rachel, after Rachel.)

“You want to know who made me this way, Quinn?” Rachel seethes. “Look into a fucking mirror.”

 

Two days later, Quinn has cleared out her office. She still tosses and turns at night, trying to get the empty shadow where Rachel’s eyes should have been out of her head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachel wakes with a start. It’s dark, and silent, and she has no idea how much time has passed or how long they’ve been asleep. They, because even before glancing over, Rachel can feel Quinn’s arm wrapped around her waist, Rachel’s hand curled around Quinn’s forearm. 

“Rachel,” Quinn says, sleepily, out into the dark quiet.

“Fuck. God, I’m so sorry…what time is it? Where’s Chet?”

And Rachel starts to sit up, mildly panicked now that sleep is quickly fading from her body, mildly embarrassed, feeling like an interloper. Feeling like a shitty fucking human being — it’s all rushing back to her now, like waking from a curse of her own casting.

“I told him to go home hours ago,” Quinn says. She tugs on Rachel’s jacket sleeve. “Christ’s sake, Rachel. Chill out. Lie back down.”

Rachel hesitates. Watches Quinn’s face in the strip of moonlight. When Rachel slumps back into the pillows, she can’t help a relieved sigh. “God, your bed is so comfortable.”

“Take off your jacket, idiot,” Quinn rasps. “And those jeans. I shouldn’t have allowed them in bed in the first place.”

Rachel does. After she shimmies out of them and tosses both items to the floor, she says, “You told Chet to go home? Is he okay with that?”

“He’s fine,” Quinn says. “It’s you, Rachel. He knows. He gets it.”

Rachel wants clarification on this point (knows what, exactly? gets what, exactly?) but decides it doesn’t really matter. Apparently, he is okay with Rachel spending the night in bed with Quinn instead of him, and she has to trust Quinn when she says it’s okay. 

They had been through a lot, Rachel reminds herself, recently and since they met. But tonight had been a turning point. The future was dim and uncertain but an incredible relief, stretching out blank in front of them. For once.

(Also, not more than five hours ago she had committed first degree arson, and not being at home can only work in her favor right now—not that Quinn’s place wouldn’t immediately be the second place law enforcement and the network would look, not that they’d have much reason to suspect Rachel in the first place, Quinn has made sure of that.)

Rachel breaks away from these thoughts long enough to look back at Quinn, whose eyes she feels on her in the darkness. 

“What?” Rachel asks, sensing some withholding.

Quinn’s brows knit together. In the moonlight, Rachel can see the muscles in her face working, jaw clenching slightly. They’re so close. No longer sleepily wrapped around each other—Quinn is on her side facing Rachel and Rachel is straight back against the pillows, but Rachel finds herself missing the contact. Misses Quinn, who is right beside her, but no longer touching her. It’s a familiar, persistent ache.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Quinn relents. 

Rachel chews on her bottom lip, and then turns onto her side to face the other woman. “What if I’m never as good at anything ever again?”

“Then that would make two of us,” Quinn says. 

“Aren’t you scared?” Rachel’s voice is small. 

“Shitless,” Quinn murmurs. “But I think it’s a good thing.”

“What if I never get better?”

“You will. I’ll make sure of it. Pay for the best therapy, forge the stupid psychiatrist’s note if I have to. And I know that defeats the purpose, but—“

Rachel reaches out suddenly, puts her hand against Quinn’s face. It’s a gesture that reflects their comfort with one another, but it still feels like a strange relief. They had spent so many months apart and out of synch, thinking that they had to be over one another for good. Rachel had spent so many months watching herself from afar, unable to stop destroying everything inside and outside her path, like something from a nightmare. Quinn had spent those months trying to reconcile what she saw in the mirror, what she began to see in Rachel.

The room is still so dark and quiet, and the moonlight feels like it might be offering to hide their secrets safe between its beams. Quinn is familiar and foreign and beautiful lying beside her, and Rachel is still swimming in the euphoric authenticity of hitting her hardest rock bottom and scraping back upwards again.

It’s like maybe, just maybe, time has stopped for them momentarily. Just for these few hours. Just long enough for Rachel to make things right, long enough for all the bad things they’d ever done or thought about doing to take a rest from haunting them. Long enough for tonight not to count (or to be the only thing that really ever will).

It’s making Rachel honest, this liminal space. More honest than she can ever remember being, even when she had a whole calendar of lie-free days chronicled out in red sharpie to remind her. She thinks about all of the women she’s ever been, knows that this penultimate one was the worst, the most unforgivable, and wonders which will end up being the last. Her whole body is quickly beginning to tremble with the sort of vulnerability and uncertainty that she’d tried to cut herself off from a long time ago, like a tourniquet on a limb.

“I’m so sorry, Quinn,” she whispers, her voice cracking swiftly and then completely. “For everything. I’m like. So unbelievably sorry. The baby—“

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Quinn whispers back, fierce. Rachel is still touching her, close enough to see that Quinn’s eyes are wet. (Quinn can feel Rachel’s hands shaking; she has to ball her fists into the sheet to keep from touching her. If she touches Rachel now, she won’t be able to stop.)

“You never used to cry in front of me,” Rachel murmurs a moment later, like an afterthought. She sweeps her thumb across Quinn’s cheekbone. “Not willingly, anyway.”

Quinn laughs, and the gathering wave of tension breaks. “Yeah, well. Things change.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agrees. “I really hope so.”

And Rachel scoots closer.

“Hormones, fucking _still_ ,” Quinn mutters again, wiping the tears that are now falling freely down her cheeks away. “Jesus. My body hasn’t gotten the memo.”

“Hey.” Rachel waits until Quinn looks into her eyes, and then she trails her thumb down, down, across Quinn’s jaw, chin, finally tracing the corner of her mouth, and the dip below her bottom lip. Rachel thinks that they are both trying very hard to pretend this is normal, the way that they’re talking, the way that Rachel’s fingertips have picked up Quinn’s tears and tracked them across her skin like footprints.

Rachel takes a breath. “Okay,” she says. “Let me get this out. You need to know that when you left, I...I––I felt like I was dying. I mean, I told a man I _barely knew_ that I’d marry him, I broke down in front of the crew and contestants, I stopped eating, stopped caring, I broke things...my hair really did start falling out.”

“Well, there are pills for that,” Quinn tells her, but her eyes are going soft and concerned in a way that Rachel has never really seen before.

“I—just.” Rachel shakes her head slightly. “Quinn. Thank you.”

Quinn has closed her eyes. “I would do anything for you, Rachel. It’s always been that way.” Rachel thinks Quinn might be leaning her face into Rachel’s palm, knows for certain a moment later when the weight shifts, when Quinn’s lips press to the pad just below her thumb. Rachel watches, and the realization that Quinn is seeking out contact, too, makes Rachel melt and burst at the same time: slow, volcanic, increasingly urgent––

“Shit. I’m going to kiss you,” Rachel says suddenly, a moment before she actually does it, just to give Quinn a fraction of a second of an out.

Quinn’s hands are around her neck before their lips touch.

(Rachel has wanted to do this for...a very long time. But she’s never really known what _this_ is. Is it that she actually wants to kiss Quinn, to fuck Quinn, or is she just conflating things again? She’s known where she stands with Quinn for a while, also knows that she thinks about Quinn during sex sometimes, but she’s never been able to nail down the details: was it a mommy issue thing? A never had any friends thing? An abusive thing, a codependent thing, a broken people now work on a reality tv show survival situation thing? A flattery thing? A hot boss thing? A I think about everyone in relation to sex thing?

A nobody has ever even pretended to care about or protect me before so I don’t care that I’m being used thing? A _real_ thing?

Rachel’s still not sure, but she knows the moment Quinn’s perfect white teeth scrape her lips that yes, this is a real thing. An emotionally fucked mess of a real thing, but the realest, truest thing in her goddamn joke of a life.)

The soft, wet slide of Quinn’s mouth makes Rachel feel like an idiot, butterflies in her stomach and heat between her legs and everything, everything all at once.

Finally, Rachel breaks away to press their foreheads together. “You feel...really, really good,” she breathes.

“Ditto,” Quinn says, a little dazedly, a little stupidly. 

Quinn moves her hand to Rachel’s chest. Rachel covers that hand with her own. It’s the hand with Chet’s ring on it: they can both feel the weight of the diamond, cool, with sharp edges.

“Is Chet going to be okay with this, too?” Rachel asks softly.

Quinn takes in a long, shaking breath. “When I thought I’d lost you for good,” she begins, trailing a finger absently down Rachel’s skin, just below her neck, “a part of me closed up. He says I went somewhere really far away. Somewhere he couldn’t reach me. Not even the baby...” 

She trails off.

Rachel is silent.

“I do love him,” Quinn says. “But...I think—to be okay, to keep going, I…really just.” And she sighs. “Need you, Rachel. I need you.”

Rachel’s heart thumps. She wonders if Quinn can hear it. Rachel has kissed so many people in her life, but she’s never kissed anyone like she kisses Quinn in the moment that follows. The kiss makes her feel faint and weak and _here_ , makes her feel so acutely alive that she can’t think about anything else. Quinn opens her mouth like she wants more, or needs to give more, and Rachel slants her body sideways into Quinn’s, and it feels _real_ , for once, and it doesn’t make either of them want to run away or stop existing.

__

__

When they finally break apart again, they look at one another for what feels like hours, but the guilt doesn’t come. (This feels like the intimacy that Rachel has wanted for so long, but that has always eluded her desperate, fumbling grasp. It is new, and sudden, and tentative, but _something_ is blooming between them, something different, something more, it _feels_ like it, doesn’t it, so… _is this it_? Rachel wonders. _Is this—?_ ) 

“I need you too,” she whispers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Two weeks later, the three of them are out by the pool. Quinn is sitting on the couch with a cocktail in hand, Rachel is floating aimlessly in the water. Chet is reading the newspaper, which he folds up and tosses aside.

“Going to bed,” he announces, even though the sun is only barely beginning to set. He walks over to place a kiss on the top of Quinn’s head. “Love you, kiddo.” He shoots a finger gun at Rachel. “Take care of her, weirdo.” 

Rachel smiles. “I’ll get her home by midnight,” she promises. 

When Chet has disappeared into the house, Rachel looks at Quinn. Quinn is already looking at her. Rachel loves that look: like Quinn is holding her breath. 

Rachel lifts herself out of the pool and makes her way over. She kneels in front of Quinn, dripping wet, and takes the glass from her hand. 

“If I’ve only got until midnight, I’m getting started right now,” Rachel says, slipping her hands beneath Quinn’s hips and sliding her bikini bottoms down. 

Quinn threads her hands through Rachel’s long, wet hair, spreads her legs slightly, and tips her head back with a sigh. 

“Tell me again,” Rachel says, kissing her way down Quinn’s stomach. 

“It’s okay to be happy,” Quinn whispers, tightening her hold. “We still deserve to try to be happy.” 

 

 

Later, Quinn pulls Rachel into her lap and teases her until Rachel’s whole body is so sensitive that she thinks she might split cleanly in two. Quinn is just as impatient, and so she slips her hand inside Rachel’s swimsuit instead of removing it altogether. Rachel rocks against her hand, so slowly, trying to make it last. Like most things they do together, they have found that they are really, really good at this. 

“You’re perfect,” Quinn says, when Rachel’s spine finally relaxes, and she comes reluctantly back down. She hasn’t moved her hand from between Rachel’s thighs. “You are so perfect.” 

Quinn’s dark hair is falling across her eyes, lit up with the fire of the setting sun, looking at Rachel with such devastating transparency— 

And yeah, Rachel’s imagination has always been good, but she thinks there’s no way she could have ever dreamt up something like this. She leans forward, clings to Quinn, warm-damp and sated and safe and maybe—something close to happy. 

She closes her eyes against the sunset, and breathes.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
